LA Galaxy defender Jorge Villafaña out several weeks after knee surgery

Jorge Villafaña was the LA Galaxy’s starting left back for about two-thirds of the 2021 season, until an injury sidelined him down the stretch.

The veteran hasn’t been present at all to start the 2022 season through three weeks, and head coach Greg Vanney said last week he would be undergoing some tests to see if he needed more medical attention, and this week, confirmed Villafaña has indeed undergone a procedure on his knee.

“He had a scope, a surgery on his knee on Monday,” Vanney told reporters at training on Wednesday. “So they did a little cartilage snip, for lack of professional words. So he’ll be probably roughly six to eight weeks, eight weeks, and we’ll see. Hopefully that will be the solution for what’s been bothering him. He had a bone bruise last year that was pretty significant. He tried to come back and he still was feeling the issues. We’ve been looking at it, hoping that the bruise would heal and then at this point, was a little bit of getting in and just really seeing what’s going on. And so they found a couple things that they needed to manage and hopefully this will be the solution for him.”

Villafaña’s absence hasn’t been fully felt yet, as newcomer Raheem Edwards has been the left back to start the season, and the utilityman has been terrific, scoring an assist in each match and helping the team to two shutouts so far. If Edwards continues to play as well as he’s started his Galaxy tenure, Villafaña may have work to do to retake the starter’s spot. Either way, he should be in line for some action if he can get healthy after recovering from this procedure.

Still, with Villafaña set to miss a good chunk of time, Vanney was asked if the team was considering adding a player at left back. He indicated it was a wait-and-see approach for the moment.

“With Jorge, it’s something we have to figure out again, we want to be patient with him,” he said. “But we also don’t want to leave ourselves overly exposed for too long. So that’s something that we need to just size up as we move through this window. But I feel like we’ve got, by and large, good depth across the team, but there’s still a couple pieces we’d like to add to try to take another step forward.”

Vanney said otherwise pretty much everyone was healthy for Saturday’s game against Orlando City. New signing Eriq Zavaleta had an MRI on his quad, but Vanney said that turned up no big concerns, and the manager said they are trying to time more minutes for Derrick Williams, who started the season with a knock but who’s trying to find more fitness. Vanney hinted the Irish international could be in line for more action soon.

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